12 Grimwauld Place
by sassy.southern.belle
Summary: (rewritten)Nobody ever told Sirius Black that being a single father would be easy. When he finds himself raising not only his own child Carina (OC) after losing her mother Moira ( OC) during the war, but also Harry, the child of his two best friends Lily and James Potter, he does it in his own unique way with the help of Remus and others. This is their family story in drabbles.
1. Authors Notes

**Disclaimer: I do not own the canonverse HP or it's characters. Those belong to the amazing and super talented JK Rowling, I'm just borrowing/playing with things a little. **

**This drabblefic is based on a headcanon I've seen floating around the interwebs.. What if Sirius had taken Harry and not been sent to Azkaban? How differently would Harry's life have went if he had a happy and (relatively) normal although occasionally dysfunctional family life with Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks.. In this case, since I love Sirius, I've added an original character of my own to the mix, Sirius daughter Carina Louise. Her mother died during a battle in the war and was Sirius girlfriend/fiance, her name was Moira. So Sirius is really stepping up and taking in Harry while raising a little girl. He has the help of course, of Remus and Nymphadora, other old friends and of course, the Weasley Fam.**

**This is for everyone who basically always wondered what Harry would be like without such a painful and dark upbringing. :) Because I love happiness and fluffy things.**

**I'm gonna have another story for just my oc and the weasley twins (she's being paired with Fred) posted a little later, set in the fifth year called I Loved Her First. :)**

**This one though is mean to be funny/fluffy/cute.**

**So this is an au fic series. You were warned here first.**


	2. we're a family now

{one}

we're a family now

Sirius stood outside James and Lily's destroyed house, barely keeping calm. As soon as he'd went to Peter's hiding place and found Peter missing, but no actual sign of a struggle, it hadn't taken much to figure out what must have happened.

And he could only blame himself.

The giant male, Hagrid wandered out of the house with Harry in his arms. Harry was wailing, obviously distressed. Sirius made his way over and said quietly, "I'll be taking my godson."

"But Dumbledore, he told me to take 'im to Lily's sister."

"Well, Hagrid, James and Lily and I discussed otherwise."

"Dumbledore wants me to take 'im to Petunia."

"And I'll deal with the old man in the morning. There's.. There's no time right now, really, to argue with you, Hagrid. Just give me Harry. Lily would not have wanted her son with that.. With her sister who hated her so much." Sirius said calmly, his eyes fixing on the giant man, his arms extended, waiting.

Hagrid eyed him a few moments and reluctantly, he placed Harry into Sirius arms. Sirius held out the keys to his flying motorcycle and said quietly, "Take it." as he nodded to the sky as if to indicate that Hagrid needed to leave.

Hagrid left and Sirius looked down at the little boy in his arms, sighing as he shook his head sadly. "You'll be safe now, Harry. I'm taking you to my home." as he looked up a few moments, his eyes catching on the destroyed second floor of his friends home. He felt his stomach knotting up, he felt the total brunt of the blame for the night, if he'd never told them to use stupid Peter Pettigrew as opposed to using him as a Secret Keeper.

"We'll find him. And he'll pay.. But for now, Harry, let's get you back to the house and out of this cold. I warn you, boy, I may not be the most conventional of fathers. But hopefully, with time, I'll be almost as good as James and Lily were. I know I can't ever replace them." Sirius stated quietly as he made his way back to 12 Grimwauld Place and stepped into his house, turning the fire up just a little higher, sitting down on the couch with Harry in his lap.

From behind him in the room, Carina, his four year old daughter asked quietly, "Daddy?"

"Right here, sugar plum."

"I woke up and you were gone. It scared me.. I thought.. And when I woke up the housekeeper, she got mad and told me to go back to bed, that you'd be back soon, that she had to watch me. She's so mean."

"Daddy's not going anywhere, sugar plum. And he'll have a talk with the housekeeper in the morning, promise.. She shouldn't be so mean.. For now though,come round here.. I have to tell you something, Carina." Sirius said quietly as he took a few deep breaths, prepared himself to tell his daughter what happened tonight.

It would only be the second time this year he'd had to try and explain loss to her, her own mum, Moira dying during an attack on one of the Wizarding villages where she owned a small cafe and bakery that catered to both Muggles and Wizards. Moira had been the love of his life.. Losing her had been hard on him.

And Lily and James had been great help to him and to Carina.. Now that they were gone, he and Carina would be the same to Harry.

"Why's Harry here, daddy?"

"He's going to be living with us now, sugar plum." Sirius said quietly, choking up just a little out of the blue. This, both of his losses combined, they hurt like hell.

And now, he was going to raise two children.

For a few moments he wondered to himself if he could actually do this, if he were actually what his daughter and his godson needed.. But he took a few deep breaths and then took Carina into his lap also and said quietly, "We three are all we have now, Carina."

Carina sniffled a little.. She'd gotten quite close to her 'uncle and aunt' in more recent months. She looked at Harry a few moments quietly and then asked, "They're with mommy now, right?"

And when Sirius had to answer her, it killed him to have to nod yes and say quietly, "They are. Mommy's probably helping them get settled in." as he hugged Harry and Carina both against him and then asked quietly, "What woke you?"

"I couldn't sleep, Daddy.. So I got up to come sleep with ya and you were gone and I got scared."

"I'm here and I'm not going anywhere." Sirius said as he turned Harry around to face him, looked at both the little boy and his own daughter as he said quietly, "I mean that. No matter what happens. We are a family now.. And I will always find my way back to the two of you. You two have each other.. I want you to be close too."

Carina nodded and said quietly to Harry, "I'll be your sister.. I can tell you things about your mommy and daddy, how they used to always come over and bring you, and spend time with my mommy and daddy."

Sirius smoothed his hand over Carina's wild mane of curly black hair and then said quietly, "In the mean time.. Maybe Dad should move your old crib int his room for the night.. So we all three can go to sleep?"

"Sleepover?"

"I'll finish reading you that book." Sirius said as he made his way down the hallway and into the nursery, putting Harry into the crib, gripping the edge of the crib for a moment as he wondered to himself just how much people were going to have to lose before this situation got any better for anyone.

He'd lost nearly everyone he cared about, and in light of tonight's events, he realized that he might have pushed away the one true friend he had left, Remus Lupin.

How the hell could he have been stupid enough to fully trust Peter? How had he not seen what Peter was before now?

He'd have to go to Remus tomorrow and apologize, admit he was wrong. Because he was going to need everyone he could get to help him keep Harry, to keep Dumbledore from demanding that Harry be sent to live with the Dursley family as Hagrid suggested Dumbledore had been planning to do earlier at the house in Godric's Hollow.

He was also going to need all the help he could get finding and hunting down that no good Peter Pettigrew. Peter had to pay for what he'd done, somehow.

And Remus, he was almost quite certain, would want to know that yet again, he'd been right about something. He could almost hear the git now, rubbing it in his face..

But sadly, of course. Because the events of tonight could all have been avoided if Sirius had just kept the secret as originally planned.

He'd have died before he allowed Voldemort or his followers find Lily and James and their son Harry.

The fact that Peter could turn on his lifelong friends so easily sickened Sirius.

But the focus for now, and for the rest of his life, was on the two children currently in his care. His own daughter needed her father.. And he would be the father that James could no longer be for Harry, he'd love Harry as his own son.

Everything else, he was quite sure, would work itself out in time.

For now, all that mattered was that they were a family.. They might be dysfunctional, not the typical one, but they were a family. They were not going to be split apart, not if Sirius could help it.

* * *

**Footnote: I want to give a special thanks to the reviewer who pointed out quite a few messy mistakes that prompted me to take down the first chapter I had originally posted and just totally rewriting it. Hopefully, -fingers crossed- it makes more sense now, and it fits a lot more smoothly with the universe put forth in the actual canon verse. I went back and read what actually happened at Godric's Hollow, suffice to say, it gave me quite a few ideas on ways to have Sirius not wind up going to Azkaban, thus making this story possible..**

**But none of this research would have been possible without the one reviewer polite enough to step up and point out all the crap I'd gotten wrong previously. And again, I apologize. It's been a few years since I've read the series or seen the movies. Trust me. But I'm gonna check things out more closely from here forward, I promise.**

**Thanks to everyone following this currently. There's not going to be much in this story other than father/children moments with the remaining Marauders Sirius and Remus (who isn't in the story yet, but he will be, soonish) and Harry and my original person, Carina. I tried my best to actually make this chapter worth reading, hopefully it is.**

**The spin off story will be posted at a later date and it'll be more about Fred x OC, OC and her family relations (some harry appearances in there) and her times at Hogwarts with more of a focus on characters like the Weasley twins, Luna and a few others.**


	3. the boy stays with me dumbledore

{two}

the boy stays with me, dumbledore

Sirius woke bright and early the next morning, despite the overall depressing nature of the day, the gray skies outside, the greyness he felt overall from the weight of his recent significant losses. Today, he'd promised Hagrid that he'd go down, he'd meet with Dumbledore and he'd make sure that the old man knew that Harry would not be going to live with the Dursley family.

But first, he needed to talk to Remus Lupin, to clear the air between the two of them.. Because he knew he couldn't do any of this, from raising Harry and Carina, to finding Peter Pettigrew and making him pay for his crimes against dear friends, alone.

Remus, after all, had been the very one who warned them that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go against the way Dumbledore wanted things done to begin with. And if he'd trusted Remus instead of Peter, the little wormy bastard, things would be one hell of a lot different than they were currently.

Harry's parents wouldn't be dead.

Moira, for that matter, might not be dead either, because it had been Remus who warned him about the planned attack that day, but at the time, the wrong set of influences and his thinking paranoid and untrue things about Remus as of late had clouded his judgement.

Maybe if he'd fought harder, Moira wouldn't have went down into the village that day to open her little cafe and bakery. She'd still be here now, everything would still be fine.

Just like the fact that remained crystal clear to him now, if he hadn't trusted Peter Pettigrew and allowed Lily and James to name Peter the secret keeper of their location with no hesitation on his part, maybe Harry wouldn't be forced to live out his life with a godfather who was admittedly an overgrown man-child at best.

Fatherhood had only dulled that slightly, it was a sad fact.

He'd just started pacing the living room of his house when Remus stepped out of the fireplace, dusting the ash and grime and soot from his dark gray pinstriped suit. "What did you want?" Remus asked, the question and it's hostile tone taking a backseat when he saw that apparently, Sirius wasn't sleeping lately.

"You were right." Sirius said quietly, still pacing, biting his thumb before taking a swing at the wall, going on to state, "If I'd just done as you suggested and either moved them, or not let them name Peter the secret keeper."

"Sit down, Sirius you stubborn arse." Remus said quietly as he asked, "And Harry?"

"I got to him just as Hagrid got there. According to Hagrid," Sirius said the next piece of the statement with a particularly strong sense of loathing, "Dumbledore was just going to go above and beyond what he had to have known Lily and James wanted and give the boy to that sister of Lily's.. The wench, Petunia."

"Oddly enough, wench isn't the strongest word I'd use for her, but continue?" Remus asked, wanting nothing more to get to the bottom of whatever Sirius was trying so hard to say while trying equally as hard to avoid saying it.

"I was wrong, damn it. I shouldn't have doubted you. I shouldn't have trusted Peter. When you came to me with your suspicions before all of this, when you explained why the strange things you'd been doing were necessary, I should have trusted you and took it at face value. Now, because I didn't, our two best friends are dead, murdered in their house just last night."

"It was going to happen one way or another, the prophecy. The prophecy Dumbledore warned us all about, the reason James and Lily as well as Harry were all in hiding to begin with?" Remus said quietly, his stomach churning as he thought about what Sirius was saying, about James and Lily being murdered.

A strong and healthy wail sounded from the nursery and Kreacher stuck his head in, giving Sirius a rather disdainful look. Remus asked quietly, "How have you been.. Since Moira?"

"Not good, Moony.. Not good at all.. I'm only barely making it, it seems like.. And now, I've got Harry.. But I swore to them, I was taking him and I'd raise him and love him as my own son and I mean that. If Dumbledore tries to take him away today, I make no promises as to what I'll do or say."

"And I don't blame you. We all discussed our safety plans.. To even think that Dumbledore is going to just leave Harry with those people.."

"Exactly. We all know what Petunia did to Lily when she wasn't at school, I mean all those things Lily said about her sister over the years we've all been friends.. What do you think she'll do to Harry?"

Kreacher cleared his throat angrily, and said in a pissed tone, "The baby is crying, Master."

"And I'll get him in a second." Sirius snapped, tense. He was more tense than usual today, last night had been one hell of a night. "I'm going to get Harry and we'll discuss what we might have to do, just in case.."

"Is twinkle awake?"

"Hasn't even rolled over. Takes after her father in that respect, I'm afraid. But would you mind going to wake her? I'm sure a visit from her uncle Remy will help her.. She didn't take hearing about Lily and James well either.." Sirius explained as Remus nodded, set off down the hallway to Sirius suite of rooms. Carina was a true and true daddy's girl in that since Moira's death, she'd been sleeping with Sirius every night almost. If she tried to sleep alone, she had nightmares and she'd wake up in a panic, screaming for Sirius, afraid that like her mother, he'd be gone too.

Remus gently prodded the little girl awake and held his arms open, hugging Carina as he asked, "Are you okay today, Twinkle?"

"Just sad, Uncle Remy.. Daddy said that Uncle James and Aunty Lily are gone.. Like my mommy.. And I just get sad because Harry, he's so little.." Carina said as she sat up in the bed, hugging her uncle, asking, "Is Daddy up?"

"He is.. Let's go down to the nursery, see if he's managed to get the little man of the house dressed. I remember the first time he tried to dress you on his own." Remus said with a slightly sadder laugh as he shook his head.

As they walked into the nursery, Sirius was swearing while trying to get one of Harry's jumpers onto his body. When he'd pull it on, Harry would try pulling it off. "No.. You can't be the naked baby today." Sirius said as he palmed his forehead and said to Remus, "Any chance you know a charm to help him stay clothed?"

"You could try putting it on the right way.. You've got the back in the front there, Black."

"Up yours, git." Sirius said as he chuckled a little, the chuckle dying a little.. It felt wrong to even laugh a little. Not after the events of the past few months.

And a few moments later found the small group of them meeting in The Hogs Head, where he'd asked Dumbledore to meet him the night before via owl. A few moments later, Dumbledore showed up and sat down, eying Sirius and then Harry.

"The boy stays with me, Dumbledore."

"I didn't come here to fight you on that fact, Sirius." Albus stated as he looked from Harry to Carina, back to Sirius and Remus before adding, "Perhaps he's better off here." after a few moments.

Sirius raked a hand through his hair and stared at Dumbledore a few moments, genuinely confused. He'd thought the old man would put up more of a fight, that he'd insist that sending Harry to live with Petunia and her husband was the right thing, the best thing to do.

Sirius, however knew that it wasn't. And having Dumbledore apparently agreeing with him as opposed to the fight he'd been expecting, well, it was a shock to him really.

"You do have a plan in place just in case this isn't over, I presume?"

Remus spoke up and said in a calm and quiet tone, "I'll take Harry and Carina.. If something else happens."

"It's settled then. The boy stays with you, Sirius."

The two males watched Dumbledore as he exited, raised brows.

"I was expecting more of a fight."

"So was I, Padfoot." Remus said as he nudged his friend and said quietly, "And now, we need to go and take care of things for Lily and James."

"We do. And we still have to plan a memorial."

"We do." Remus echoed as the two men and the two children stepped from the fireplace and into the sitting room of 12 Grimwauld Place, sitting down, talking about everything quietly as Harry napped on the sofa close to Sirius and Carina read a book by the fireplace in a rocking chair.

At least they all had each other.

* * *

**Footnote: **

**Thanks to everyone following/favoriting this currently. There's not going to be much in this story other than father/children moments with the remaining Marauders Sirius and Remus and Harry and my original person, Carina. I tried my best to actually make this chapter worth reading, hopefully it is.**

**The spin off story will be posted at a later date and it'll be more about Fred x OC, OC and her family relations (some harry appearances in there) and her times at Hogwarts with more of a focus on characters like the Weasley twins, Luna and a few others.**

**I warn you in advance.. Dumbledore is most likely OOC in this chapter and I'm sorry. I tried to avoid it, but I realize that yes, he probably is OOC. He won't be in this story often, though. He's a really tough character to write. I pray I'm getting the others IC, I really am trying, so hopefully I am.**

**It's just angsty right now because the losses suffered are still so fresh. But I promise, happier times are coming!**


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